Man on the Moon (1999)

[TMC]

http://officialfan.proboards.com/thr...n-on-moon-1999

Just saw this film, what did everyone think of it? Despite a few historical inaccuracies, i thought it was a great film that pretty much captured what Andy was about (despite the fact that all i know about Kaufman was his wrestling career and a few performances i caught of him on old SNL reruns). Jim Carrey was excellent as Kaufman, and he seemed to almost become Andy Kaufman at times.

[treky]

I remember seeing it back in-I guess it was 2001-on a cable channel, and I thought it was great! Like you said, Jim Carrey was great as Andy Kaufmann. It was like seeing the real Andy brought back to life. I just wish that Danny DeVito would have played Louie in the scenes showing him on TAXI. But he was playing his agent and was also the producer so I guess that was why.
I remember seeing his appearance on David Letterman that they re-created; seeing it in the movie was like seeing it all over again.

[visaman666]

I actually got to see it at the sneak preview back in 1999. I thought it was good, obviously they played around with the facts a bit. Cortney Love was miscast, and they never even mentioned Lynne Margulies's (Love) brother, Johnny Legend, who I happened to meet several years ago.

[Chocolate Moose]

I loved it.

[Latka Gravas]

Man in the Moon was a great bio-pic., though I don't know how accurate it was re: Andy Kaufman's actual life. I actually had only seen a handful of Taxi episodes prior to seeing this around 2003-ish (on DVD).

But, when I was watching Taxi for the first in it's entirety last Fall, I ended up re-watching the film & appreciating it more due to the recreation of the "Taxi" set, etc. It was also interesting to know that, as seen in the film, Kaufman wanted his alter-ego "Tony Clifton" to make 1 (or more) appearances on the show. But, as seen in the film, things "fell through" and Clifton was never in an episode of the show - but it would have been funny if he had been - LOL.

[TMC]

(LANGUAGE)

It got a lot of critical and audience praise, but Nostalgia Critic has some major issues with this biographical miss. Let's take a look at Man on the Moon.

[Heenan Fan]

I liked it. I followed the story in real time in the 1980's. Andy was legit nuts and could rub people the wrong way. He didn't try to make others laugh, he tried to make himself laugh. If you were his friend, you were his friend for life.

I always thought it was cool that he got to play out his lifelong dream to become a heel pro wrestler. Pretty good movie. Almost hard to believe the same man who made One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest made Man On The Moon.

[PracTz]

I have to admit that Mr. Carrey as good a job as anyone could have playing Mr. Kauffman. However; those re-enacted 'Taxi' scenes were surreal in that Mr. Carrey was 36 at the time of the portrayal (almost a decade older than Mr. Kauffman had been when he started playing Latka) while the REAL 'Taxi' alums ALL were now 20 years older than than they'd been when they'd last played their parts in the Sunshine Cab Company.
Somehow, I think Mr. Kauffman would have loved the irony of Latka appearing to be comparatively Peter Pan-like to the other characters!

[TMC]

While I was going through TV Tropes, I found this:

Vindicated by History: Inverted — the film was critically-acclaimed at the time of its release and Carrey won plaudits for what was seen as an eerie channeling of Kaufman, to the point that many were shocked he didn't receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. However, over time (and unlike Carrey's other early dramatic film, The Truman Show), opinions on the film and Carrey's performance in particular have declined considerably. With much more of Kaufman's filmography available on demand to the general public than it was in 1999 - including a very popular side-by-side scene comparison of the scenes Carrey is re-creating to Kaufman's original performances - it's obvious that Carrey is overacting, depicting Kaufman throughout with an anxious, nervous energy (and seeming lack of confidence and self-assurance) the real man never really had in any of his personas. This might not be so terrible in and of itself if not for the making-of documentary in which Carrey applied extreme Method Acting techniques to the point of claiming to be possessed by the spirit of Kaufman (which he has never renounced post facto and even reasserts in the documentary). Whether or not Kaufman would have approved of such antics is an open question (those who had interacted with both men were divided, and Jerry Lawler was particularly vocal in claiming that Carrey wasn't acting anything like the real Kaufman at all off-camera) what we do know is that he created a hostile work environment to underwhelming results, especially as the general backlash against Method Acting mounted starting in The New '10s. His audition tapes - made, of course, before he claims to have been "possessed" by Kaufman - show him giving a very similar performance to what was seen in the finished film, so his Method Acting didn't even improve his performance beyond what he would have given had he not done it at all.